Passover is just about over. Despite news reports of matzah shortages across the country, our family managed to acquire enough boxes to make it through the holiday, with even a few pieces to spare.

If have noticed that I and a lot of my family and friends who observe the basic rules of Passover are getting quite grumpy and fatigued. Our daily routine of toast or a bagel and coffee for breakfast has been replaced by the mostly colorless, odorless, and tasteless matzah cracker, which must be slathered with butter/margarine, and jam to give it some pizazz.

Making a sandwich with matzah is a lesson in futility. Most of the contents of such a concoction end up in your lap with the first bite. There are two exceptions to these culinary disappointments. The first is matzah brei, a dish of scrambled eggs and matzah. The second is matzah balls, usually served in a chicken broth.

There are as many theories as to how one is to make a proper matzah brei or matzah ball as there is over “wet” and “dry” barbecue. But both of these dishes taste wonderful on the first few days of Passover. By the sixth day, even they can cause grumpiness.

Matzah is central to the Passover ritual. In the traditional seder (Hebrew-meaning: order) ritual, the leader of the seder holds up a piece and declares, “This is the bread of…” And that is precisely the moment when most translations of the text fail.

The passage is in Aramaic, unlike the rest of the seder which is in Hebrew. The word in question is anyah. I grew up with the translations which referred to the matzah as the bread of “affliction.” Every time our family got to that word, a cousin would shout, “Yeah, it sure is the bread of afliction-my intestines will be afflicted for a week.”

A more accurate translation would be the bread of “poverty.” It was never about what the bread did to the consumer. It was all about the bread symbolizing the impoverished state of the Israelites as they departed from Egypt. The text continues, “Let all who are hungry come and eat. Let all who are in want share the Passover seder with us.”

A Muslim friend who had recently attended a seder commented to me, “You guys certainly hold a grudge for a long time. You left Egypt 3,500 years ago, and you are still speaking about it as if it were yesterday.”

Remembering is what Jews do best, and it is remembering that has sustained us as a people, while great civilizations disappear from sight. But remembering without growing and learning is a form of idolatry. It amounts to worshiping the past. The seder ritual for me is an annual reminder that the exodus from Egypt has no meaning unless it puts within us an empathy for the oppressed of the world and an impatience for injustice.

A liberated slave who goes free, is a powerful symbol. A liberated slave who returns to liberate others is truly a champion of the divine. It is that thought which will get me through my matzah blahs.